Father retraces steps leading to daughter's disappearance

J.S. Carras/The Record Doug Lyall, Suzanne's father, sits on the No. 12 CDTA bus Monday as it prepares to leave Crossgates Mall. Lyall's daughter, Suzanne, has not been seen since getting off the bus the night of 9 p.m. March 2.

In the back room of Babbages at Crossgates Mall, Suzy, as friends and family call her, got into a pair of dark jeans and a T-shirt, slipped into her black, ankle-length Australian trench coat, loaded up her bulky backpack and made her way out of the computer store.

With a few minutes to spare, Suzy spoke briefly with a co-worker, Matt Olsen.

"She smiled and said good-bye," he recalled. "I said, ‘See you later.' "

But he wouldn't.

That was the last time anyone remembers hearing the UAlbany student.

Suzy vanished.

Now, more than eight months later, police continue to investigate the disappearance of the then-19-year-old Ballston Spa resident.

Suzy awoke in the early morning hours of Monday, March 2, in her Colonial Quad dormitory room. She was a little nervous about the day ahead. It was mid-term week and the computer science major had two exams scheduled that day, including an Automata test for computer hardware and design.

She took a shower and dried her hair. Officials would later find her hair dryer on her unmade bed.

Suzy went to a lecture center shortly before 10:10 a.m. and took a history exam, the first of her two mid-terms. After completing the test, she returned to Colonial Quad around noon, and saw some of her dormmates. She asked about the lunch menu in the cafeteria, according to her father, Douglas Lyall.

Sometime around 1:25 p.m., she began her Automata exam, the test that most worried her because her grades had been a disappointment so far.

After the test, she went to Collins Circle and caught the Route No. 12 CDTA bus to Crossgates. Just outside Babbages, she withdrew $20 from an ATM machine, her father said.

Garland Nelson, the Babbages store manager, believes she arrived at work sometime after 4 p.m. Babbages corporate officials said Suzy received credit for working 4 hours on March 2, which means she must have signed in on the computer time sheet around 5 p.m.

Suzy didn't act out of the ordinary, Nelson said, but when asked about her mid-terms, she didn't want to talk about them.

Nelson left the store at 7:30 p.m., having missed his 6:30 bus.

Soon after Nelson left, Suzy took a short break. She walked to Mrs. Field's for a cookie -- a ritual for Babbages' employees. She then rejoined Olsen in the store, and business was fairly steady, he recalled.

When Suzy left the mall to catch her bus, she took one of two paths: a service entrance adjacent to Babbages, which leads to a dimly lit loading ramp containing massive industrial dumpsters; or a much longer route through the cavernous mall to an exit near Ruby Tuesday's restaurant.

Suzy's fiancé, Richard Condon, said the she sometimes left the mall by the service entrance, despite his firm objections.

Olsen said he didn't see which way Suzy went.

It was 31 degrees under a clear sky partially lit by a crescent moon -- above-average temperatures for a March 2 night -- when she left the mall.

The ground was bare, with remnants of snow piled in shrinking banks.

An off-duty Babbages employee said he noticed Suzy at the bus stop around 9:30.

The regular Route No. 12 CDTA driver, who has operated the route on and off for 12 years, pulled up to the mall stop at his regular time. At about 9:30, he opened the door to let his passengers in.

About 20 people got on the bus, he guessed, including a woman with light brown hair. The driver, who asked to keep his identity withheld, said he knew her as a regular fare. She often smiled when she boarded the bus, but he never knew her name.

The next day, though, he learned the name of them smiling woman when police questioned him about the night of March 2.

With certainty, he remembers Suzy boarding the bus. At 9:35, the bus left the mall. Three minutes later, the bus made a quick stop near Walmart. Though the driver can't recall if he picked up more passengers, no one got off the bus, he said. The next stop was the UAlbany campus at Collins Circle.

The bus arrived at 9:45 p.m. after the four-mile trip. Nearly half of the passengers left the bus then, he recalled.

The driver said he can't remember if Suzy got off the bus or not, but a suitemate in Suzy's dorm said she spotted her getting as she waited to board the Route No. 12 bus.

The student caught a side glimpse of the woman getting off the bus, but said that she was without question Suzanne Lyall.

Suzy had only a 200-yard walk to her Colonial Quad dorm. She never made it.

Lyall said his daughter often took a shortcut to her dorm. But that route is partially obscured by a clump of trees.

It is unknown which path she took.

Whichever way she went, it has led her away from friends and family.

She simply vanished.

Condon, Suzy's fiancé, called Doug and Mary Lyall early the next morning to say he couldn't reach her. Campus and local police were called in to find her. State Police joined the investigation a day later.

Since March 2, only a handful of developments have surfaced.

Suzy's ATM card was used at the Central Avenue Stewart's store at 3:56 p.m. on March 3, the day after she disappeared. Someone punched in Suzy's four-digit personal identification number and withdrew $20.

Police have issued a sketch of a black male in his 30s wearing a Nike baseball cap who was caught on the store's surveillance videotape at about the same time as the ATM transaction. But investigators have been unable to find the man.

In early May, two students found Suzy's old Babbages name tag under some brush in a visitor's parking lot about 30 yards from where she stepped off the CDTA bus. Police believe the discovery has nothing to do with the disappearance.

Doug Lyall and The Record attempted to recreate Suzy's last known steps last week. Accompanied by a reporter, Lyall traced Suzy's movements from March 2. It proved to be a difficult and daunting task.

As Lyall sat on the Route No. 12 bus, the same his daughter rode eight months earlier, his face revealed the toll of the ordeal. But he refuses to surrender. He has vowed to find his daughter.